Knäckebröd 1966

Claes Oldenburg made this sculpture of crispbread using plaster, latex and wood. What strikes me is its colour - a kind of drab, greyish brown, the colour of cardboard or old newspapers. It makes me think about the overlooked, everyday objects that surround us. There is something really appealing about this muted colour scheme combined with the slightly crumbling edges of the crispbread. You can almost feel its rough texture. The little indentations are almost obsessively and evenly distributed, like a kind of code or language. Oldenburg often enlarged mundane objects to challenge our perceptions, turning the ordinary into something monumental and absurd. Like, what if crispbread was life-size? It brings to mind the work of Fischli and Weiss. They also played with scale and materials to reveal the hidden strangeness of our world. Ultimately, Oldenburg invites us to reconsider the world around us with curiosity.